At the Mobile World Congress 2017 (MWC 2017) in Barcelona, China Mobile, Huawei, Deutsche Telekom, and Volkswagen have released their shared vision for the 5G era in their 5G Service guaranteed Network Slicing White Paper as all parties prepare to attend the 2017 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. In this white paper, the world-leading vendor, operators, and vertical industry partner explore new business models for mobile networks and share their insights into the evolution of the current mobile network towards an "All Cloud" 5G era.

Distinct from the user-oriented 4G mobile broadband network, 5G will enable for the first time the Internet of Everything (IoE), generating new industries on an unprecedented scale and injecting infinite vitality into the mobile communications industry. Enormous growth of service types will be empowered by 5G, such as mobile healthcare, Internet of Vehicles, smart home, industrial control, and environment monitoring.

As hundreds of billions of new devices join the network, 5G will call for higher flexibility and scalability to handle the wide range of new devices as well as services. Beyond providing reliable mobile broadband, the demands of vertical industries will be satisfied when 5G meets the requirements of multiple industries with the construction of a service guaranteed, flexible, and dynamic network.

The white paper presents industry-leading viewpoints on 5G network slicing, with topics ranging from industry development trends, vision and definition for the 5G Service guaranteed Network Slicing, End-to-End (E2E) architecture, key technologies, and example use cases. Network slicing plays a significant role in 5G via offering a service guaranteed E2E network solution. Based on a shared infrastructure, network slicing provides vertical industries with an economical operation mode, shorter Time-to-Market (TTM), performance comparable to dedicated-networks, and better technical support and evolution.

"Faced with new technological requirements and challenges, global operators, vendors and partners from vertical industry should work together to investigate and promote network slicing usability by leveraging technologies that will guarantee E2E network slicing services. For example, cross-layer technologies allow for collaboration between multiple domains, including access network, core network, transport network, platform and service. Meeting this challenge will involve new architectures and protocols as well as an open and innovative mind," said Wang Xiaoyun, General Manager of Technology Department of China Mobile.

"We hope to work with global operators, vendors, and vertical industry partners to facilitate the development of service guaranteed network slicing in terms of application scenarios, technologies, standards, and the industry chain. We believe that a booming 5G industry will contribute to the overall development of society, and help establish a more open ecosystem," said Dr. Tong Wen, CTO of Huawei Wireless Network Product Line.

“Network slicing is envisaged as a key innovation in 5G technology to flexibly and efficiently support the enormous growth in service types. We have already demonstrated in trials the feasibility of 5G slicing to support multiple services as virtual networks on a common infrastructure,” said Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, CTO, Deutsche Telekom. “This is just a start, and we are committed to cross-industry collaboration on 5G technology and ecosystem development to ensure network slicing can deliver concrete economical value to our industry customers.”

“Connected Vehicles will become one of the key enablers for the next generation of mobility. We will introduce safety-related warning functionality based on the IEEE 802.11p / ITS-G5 standard. The 5G technology will become an interesting addendum at a later point in time and can be used to implement use cases which improve the comfort and efficiency of automated driving. Use cases of this type come with strong quality-of-service requirements and network slicing is a promising technology candidate for fulfilling these requirements.” said Johann Jungwirth, Chief Digital Officer at Volkswagen.